


Triumvirate

by LavenderLizards



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, F/F, F/M, Multi, Night Terrors, PTSD, Therapy, Threesome, thrupple, toxic family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:08:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderLizards/pseuds/LavenderLizards
Summary: A patient, Alexis Luthor, falls in love with her therapist...and his wife.
Relationships: alexis luthor/evan sanders, alexis luthor/madeline sanders, evan sanders/madeline sanders
Kudos: 1





	Triumvirate

The waiting room looked just as I had expected. It was modern enough with it’s gray hessian fabric sofa and leather club chairs. A white quartz countertop stretched out in an “L” to my right and a woman sat behind it, glasses-framed eyes glued to a computer screen.

I swallowed and walked over to where a fish tank hugged the adjacent wall. It was a large rectangle on a modern black stand. The water within churned gently at the top. 

Confused, I bent and squinted. There were rocks, fake plants, the filter...but no fish.

My mom brushed past me and sat in a club chair, the leather squeaking as she sat.

“Can I offer you anything?” the head from behind the computer poked out and smiled at my mother. 

“No thanks, I’m good.” 

My head turned back to the tank and I watched as the soft blue lights shimmered in the water like cut gems. 

“How about you?” 

I stood and looked at her. “Oh, no thanks.” 

She gave a curt nod and returned to her work. The sound of bubbling water and clacking keyboard strokes filled the awkward silence that I had both created and decided to break.

“Where are the fish?” 

Her face reappeared. 

“They’re coming. We haven’t gotten them yet.” 

“Ahh,” I nodded. 

My mom had brought a book and was cracking it open. Her jacket was off and slung over the arm of her seat. The receptionist was back at her typing. The tank continued filtering water for no fish in particular. And I just stood there with my hands balled into fists in my pockets so tightly that my nails were slicing into my skin.

As I sat on the sofa I wondered if the receptionist wondered why my mother was here. 

Did a parent often accompany a 30 year old to their therapy appointment? 

Probably not. 

I dragged in a deep breath as I sat in silence, appearing calm and collected but inwardly panicking. 

Seeing a new therapist for the first time was a daunting prospect. 

It’s a fact of life that not everyone a person encounters, they'll click with, and therapy is no different. I had a some bad experiences - one in college, and two since moving to Colorado - and now they flashed behind my eyelids, reminding me that this too might fail.

I felt my ribs shiver and the whisper of a panic attack flutter beneath my skin. Vulnerability clung to me like an unwanted perfume and I wondered if the receptionist could smell it. I wondered if the therapist would. 

Part of me wanted to simply stand up and run away. 

The hollow earthy taste of CBD oil clung to my molars and I swallowed dryly. It was too late to turn tail. I was here and checked in. My credit card was on file, despite the fact that I had no money to give.

Lacing my fingers together, I leaned forward and reminded myself to breathe. At some point I had set my sketchbook down on the coffee table in front of the sofa and as I stared at it, it seemed to stare back at me.

Art was my distraction, my weapon, my strength. 

A loose piece of paper peeked out from beneath the black cover and I reconsidered whether I ought to give it to the therapist. 

Gritting my jaw, I looked up and saw a man walking down the hallway towards the waiting room. My heart skipped a beat, thudding heavily like a creature trying to kick it’s way out of my chest. I wondered if he was a patient or my therapist. 

The man stopped at the mouth of the waiting room and put his hands in his pockets. “Alexis?” 

I unfolded my body from the knot I had wound it in and stood. I grabbed my sketchbook, jacket, and purse, and walked past my mom who had glanced up from her book. 

Embarrassment, searing, bitter, and red, tore through me. 

I shouldn’t need my mom to come with me. My therapist had seen her there and would know that she was with me soon enough, if he didn’t already. 

“Well, that’s part of why you’re here,” she said to me in the car as her seatbelt whizzed away. The same car where I’d had countless panic attacks. 

I walked up to the much taller man and watched as he moved to retrieve a thermometer. “Just gotta zap you,” he said through his blue face mask. I nodded silently and he pointed it at my forehead. 

“Alive and well,” he turned it briefly to flash me my own temperature before putting it away. 

“Follow me,” he turned and walked down the hall. Our shoes clacked in tandem against the wood floor and he walked me to a room with his name next to the door. Written in Arial black letters read, “Evan Sanders.”

He motioned me inside and I began dissecting the space without even meaning to.

“I’ll be right back, I’ve got to use the restroom. Can I get you anything?” he asked, rubbing his hands together. 

“No, I’m good.” 

“Okay, be right back.”

He left me alone in the space, indicating some level of trust in me that had not yet been earned, and I gravitated towards the sofa, dropping my purse and jacket on the floor. 

The room was cozier than the waiting area and had a sense of familiarity. It felt lived in, like an extension of Dr. Sanders rather than a coldly clinical arena for Freudian observations. The warmth of it immediately made me uneasy...but to be fair, I was always uneasy.

I sat on the blue sofa, which was too large for my frame, and let my eyes swallow up as much as they could before I could be observed observing. Of particular interest to me was which books were given space in the wooden cabinet with glass panels next to the lone club chair that was obviously for Mr. Sanders.

Even before I had gotten my master’s in publishing, I paid close attention to which books people had in their homes or offices (if any). Were the paperback spines wrinkled from age and use, or were they props for show? Were they in an office because the owner had too many books in his house, so they spilled over into the office? Were they here to be offered to patients? 

“Hello.” 

He had returned, and my anxiety with him.

It annoyed me that when he sat, the comically large single armchair that he sat in no longer seemed oversized. 

I felt small. 

I didn’t know where to start and voiced that much to him. 

My hand reached for my sketchbook of its own volition. It was my shield after all. I flipped it open and took out the loose paper. 

“What’s this?” he asked, scooting forward to take what I was offering.

“My trauma timeline,” I handed it over and as soon as my fingers left the paper, I questioned the move. 

It was silly. Ridiculous. A lighthearted attempt to put the most traumatic events of my life in some sort of comprehensible order. 

I feared that my past was either too much to handle or too insignificant in comparison to the horrors that others experienced. My mind was quick to tell me that either way, I was deficient and so were my experiences.

I watched Sanders’ eyes flit over the words and drawings. There was amusement and intrigue laced into the creases at the corners of his eyes. 

Despite handing my history over to him, I had no idea where to start. Every second of my past, every traumatic event, sat gathered in a massive twist in my stomach. Word vomit made my throat tight, burning up my esophagus like heartburn, and my fingers tingled from the start of hyperventilation.

Absently I worried about saying too much, about letting all of the pain and loneliness just spew out of me at once. 

I sat prone, my tongue a knife, ready to cut myself open and spill all over the floor like blood for this man, this stranger. 

I was struggling with infertility. My Dad was (probably) nearing the end of his life from a twenty year long battle with cancer. My mother had macular degeneration and diabetes. I had gone through the dating ringer. I was anxious and depressed and a global pandemic and election from hell was fraying my sanity. And most of all...I couldn’t drive alone without having massive panic attacks. The phobia had made me a prisoner and few people understood or cared.

There’s more.

But not enough time to tell him, not today. 

I resolved to tell him two weeks from today, or two weeks from that. Without a job for over a year, I could only go that often, despite barely surviving that interval. 

"I talked way too much," I informed him at the end of our session.

"No, you didn't," I could tell he was giving me a conciliatory smile, even behind the mask. "I think we're a good fit," he offered as I gathered my stuff. "And if you don't see me, I think you should see someone."

I gave a dry laugh. Well, at least my problems were deemed important enough to warrant therapy. I did always aim to be the best. I worried that perhaps he was trying to pawn me off on someone else with the comment, but he threw in another remark about us possibly being able to work well together. 

I actually almost felt a bit better as I collected my mom and introduced her to him before we left. Shame still writhed beneath my skin, but I pushed it aside the best I could. Besides, there was plenty of time later to feel that searing despair.

“I don’t understand why you’re even going to therapy,” my Dad shook his head when I got home. His body was in 2020 but his brain was in 1958. He sat down on our gray sofa with a groan and looked up at me with eyes that too closely resembled mine. “I don’t even understand why you have PTSD,” he picked up his phone and looked down at its screen. “What could be so traumatic that happened to you?” 

I crushed my teeth together to bar the vitriol that sat sour on my tongue from escaping. Tears leapt to my eyes, stinging like sand as I bid them to remain unshed. 

Silently I turned and walked towards the stairs. Towards my exile. My reprieve. 

I walked down the steps, past the blank wall where the Kirkland-esque art used to hang before I ripped it off the wall, tossed it down the steps, and snapped it in half during a heated fight. 

After the fourteenth step I finally let the hot liquid roll down my cheeks.

Two weeks until I saw Sanders again. 

I had given the older man a teaspoon of water when a turbulent, tear-salted ocean of chaos and despair sloshed beneath the surface. 

Having a human being in my life who could listen, mostly understand, and not judge, was like seeing the sun for the first time after being buried in the cold earth; and now that I had experienced that warmth, I ached for it again.

The room I returned to sat as it always did. I probably wouldn’t have hated it so much if I wasn’t forced to be trapped in it so often. 

The walls were barely blue with a teal accent the same color that my apartment in Texas had been. It had been a feat to shove my 1200 square foot luxury apartment into a single room, but I managed. 

My mahogany dresser matched my nightstands and bed. Every available surface was covered in either books or art supplies. A silent plastic and metal army of water bottles and cans congregated on my nightstand. The hamper was overflowing. And my bookshelf, one of four six foot towers, begged to be reorganized. 

I sat heavily on the end of my gray flannel clad mattress, hands clasped together, and felt more tears leak down my cheeks and catch on my chin. 

If it weren’t for a box of Cheese-It’s, two sketchbooks, a pencil bag, my laptop, and a box of Kleenex behind me, I would have just let myself fall backwards. 

Briefly, I considered cleaning, but a four hour depression nap seemed more appealing. I crawled into bed and wondered if I could crawl back out in fourteen days. 

I longed to just...get away...to just drive away.

If only I could.


End file.
